When Tarik Moody arrived in Milwaukee in early 2007 to take a job as a music host and digital manager with a startup radio station, he had no idea how long the gig would last.

"A lot of startups don't make it," said Moody, a former architect who used to design airport facilities.

Moody is still on the air and directing digital operations, and the nonprofit 88Nine Radio Milwaukee is going strong.

WYMS-FM (88.9) marked its 10th anniversary as Radio Milwaukee in February.

But on Saturday, there will be a celebration of a decade on air with a block party from 1:30 to 10 p.m. outside the station's studios at 220 E. Pittsburgh Ave. in Walker's Point.

From playing hip hop and indie music to broadcasting Milwaukee School Board meetings, Radio Milwaukee has carved out a unique space on the airwaves and in the community.

"We're trying to reflect Milwaukee back to itself," said Peter Buffett, a musician, composer and philanthropist who helped spearhead Radio Milwaukee's founding.

Buffett, son of legendary investor Warren Buffett, lived in Milwaukee from 1989 to 2005. Buffett said the station's genesis grew out of conversations he had with Todd Broadie, a consultant involved in startups. They were discussing the work of Richard Florida, an urban economist.

"We were impressed with his take on cultural creatives and what makes a city vibrant and how do we retain and attract young talent," Buffett said.

At around the same time, WYMS, whose call letters stand for Your Milwaukee Schools, was a taxpayer-supported jazz station that was draining the finances of Milwaukee Public Schools.

MPS was looking to get out of the radio business. Eventually, a deal was struck with Buffett and others to operate the station while the school system retained the station license.

"How can we pull Milwaukee through the speakers? How can we have a city reflected in a radio station?" Buffett said, as he discussed how the station was put together.

Among the key players in the early development of the station was Jeff Bentoff, a former newspaper reporter and city government official, who alerted Buffett that MPS was planning to seek an operator.

Joe Puerta, a founding member of the band Ambrosia, provided additional credibility to the group's efforts when he joined the board.

Mary Louise Mussoline, the station's second executive director from 2009 to 2016, used her fundraising background to diversify the station's finances. Buffett's NoVo foundation provided early funding. In 2015, the station's revenue was $2.4 million.

It was under Mussoline, who died in February, that the station moved out of a warren of rooms in the basement of the MPS building on W. Vliet St. to state-of-the-art studios and its own building Walker's Point. More than 1,700 donors contributed to the $2.8 million complex created from a former foundry.

With the first song it played during its debut broadcast, "Everyone Deserves Music" by Michael Franti & Spearhead, Radio Milwaukee has sought to be inclusive.

"I think the mission for diversity was clearly there but the understanding of how to make a lot of different genres of music work together was in development," said Jordan Lee, who joined the station in 2008 and is now the program director.

"There were some musical train wrecks happening," he said. "It's pretty hard to go from Public Enemy to the Rolling Stones in one musical segue. Bridge-building is something that has been an evolving process."